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any of us who live in the great
Pacific Northwest put our
roadsters away around the
first of November. I plug the exhaust
system and intake before I cover it,
something I learned from a military
piston engine flight line mechanic. It
works.When I start my car four or five
months later, it runs as if I drove it the
day before.
We don’t expect much sun here in
Seattle for four months after October
ends. For some of us, desperation sets
in from this yearly period of roadster
deprivation. We need to start the car
in the garage, just to hear it run. Hav-
ing once suffered this ailment, I no
longer do this, but I do have the
shakes by spring and need a road fix
to make them go away.
This year I spent the month of
March in Florida doing car-things.
Good medicine. In April, the weather
Gods gifted Washington with a few
sunny spring days averaging more
than 20 degrees above normal, one day
reaching 89, breaking the records for
ANY April day dating back to 1894. I
had to get out on the road.
Saturday morning I left at 8:30
a.m. for Highway 2, one side of the
Cascades Loop which round-trips
through the mountains between rainy
WesternWashington and the high, dry
desert country of Eastern Washington
where sun is the norm.
The young mountains are a spec-
tacular sight on a light traffic, early
spring weekend morning, before the
motorhomes of summer invade the
highways and block the views. I drove
along comfortably at 60 mph on the
two-lane, motor purring and top folded
in the boot. Cold air at 4,000-feet over
Stevens Pass had me leaning toward
the heater vent under the tonneau. I
smiled at the site of the downhill ski
lift lines from the road. Had to be a
great day up there above 5,000-feet
where it’s still too cold to melt snow.
We had normal snowpack to date,
though we lost twenty-five percent of
it after a week of above-normal tem-
peratures. The rain is back now, and a
week later its cooler. It will build back
up.
Leavenworth, the first sizable
town east of the mountains, resembles
a Bavarian village. Not on the destina-
tion list this weekend, so passed
through. The highway widened to a di-
vided four lane at Wenatchee where
the mountains end. When I came over
a hill and down a valley, snowcapped
mountains above green hills in the
rearview mirror made me pull off the
road. As one friend commented on the
photo; “
It looks like a picture puzzle
.”
I stopped for fuel later and the car
drew a crowd. “
We don’t see many of
these English looking cars out here,
”
one of them said. It’s Washington
Apple Country, and more recently
vineyard country, where pickup trucks
and tractors populate the roads, but
the people who live there like Cobras.
One gentleman in a Safeway parking
lot waved and yelled, “
Thank you!
” For
The SHELBY AMERICAN
Summer 2016 82
Is it really fun just watching your car sit in your garage?
– Harvey Sherman
M